


A Century Alone; A Hundred Years Together

by AllThoseOtherWorlds



Series: Caged Grace [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cagefic, Enochian, Gen, Lucifer's Cage, and other stuff too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-20 03:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1494298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllThoseOtherWorlds/pseuds/AllThoseOtherWorlds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam jumps into the Cage with two archangels, he's not really expecting much other then torture and pain. What actually happens is a lot more interesting.</p><p>This is a prequel to the rest of the series, and as such can obviously be read on it's own. Essentially, Michael and Lucifer decide to talk with Sam instead of torturing him because they think it will have more long-term entertainment value.</p><p>Also, they play monopoly and D&D, write novels, and argue about cats vs dolphins taking over the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Landing

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Obviously, I do not own Supernatural, and I make no money from this piece, etcetera.
> 
> Anything in bold is spoken or thought in Enochian.
> 
> Comments, questions, constructive criticisms, and other polite forms of feedback are always welcome and encouraged.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam jumps, the archangels fight, and Castiel pays a visit.

            Sam was falling. The ground had opened up beneath him and he was falling through a vortex that he was certain wasn’t part of the tangible Earth. The sensation of endlessly falling was strange, but stranger still was feeling Lucifer separate from him as they fell. It wasn’t like when he was taken as a vessel – that had been focused and all at once, energy spilling into him through his eyes and mouth. This was subtle, gradual, as though wisps of energy were pulling away from him as they fell, and converging together into another form falling beside his own. Sam wondered if Lucifer even knew he was doing it, if he was doing it on purpose or if it was a side effect of falling through this place for the second time in eternity.

            He didn’t know how long they’d been falling, or how much time was left to go. After a time, the soft shush of air rushing by and the utter monotony of the situation, against all odds, lulled him into something resembling unconsciousness.

            When he awoke, he was in a flat, empty space in which he did not remember landing. For one brief moment he was confused, and then the events leading up to his plummet into the Cage came back to him in a rush, and he groaned.

            It was then that he became aware of the other two people in here with him – people who _he_ had dragged down here. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he surveyed the nearly empty space and caught sight of Michael and Lucifer involved in a loud and quickly-escalating argument.

            Lucifer, thankfully, looked like Nick rather than Sam, and he took a brief moment to be thankful that he didn’t have to spend eternity with a version of the Devil who looked exactly like him. Sam assumed the other figure was Michael rather than Adam, because of the two, only Michael would be in a shouting match with Lucifer.

            Sam tried to follow the yelling, but it didn’t seem to be in English and it all sounded the same to him. He sighed and started mentally reciting any poems or stories or plotlines of movies that he had memorised, since he didn’t have much else to do for entertainment other than watching the increasingly violent fighting between the archangels in front of him, and thinking of the people he had left was too depressing for the moment. At least the archangels seemed to be ignoring him.

            Some part of him – the part that helped him be a good hunter – wanted to try to escape, to fight, to do _anything_. But he wasn’t going to. Anything he did that could help him escape would help the others escape too, and he couldn’t risk that. So he watched, and replayed his memories, and waited. He knew this whole “ignore the human” thing was too good to last forever.

***

            Sam found, to his surprise, that his watch still worked. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised, except that the entire situation was so unusual that the idea of something mundane still doing what it always did was shocking. Nevertheless, the watch worked, and Sam found himself glad of it. He liked the fact that, if nothing else, he could at least keep track of how much time had passed. It was a bit pointless to measure eternity, but it still made him feel a bit better, a bit more in control.

            It was because of the watch, then, that he knew a month had passed when Castiel came. Nothing had changed from that first day – Michael and Lucifer were tearing each other’s throats out (literally) and Sam was sitting on the floor, watching them. He’d gotten up the courage to revisit his memories of the outside world about a week in, and ever since then had been obsessively remembering Dean, Castiel, and Bobby, and little things about hunting or motel rooms, or things he had read. Anything to keep himself sane.

            He had just finished humming one of Dean’s classic rock songs under his breath when the lighting in the Cage changed, growing brighter and _louder_ , and he knew what that sensation meant. He caught a glimpse of Michael and Lucifer, turning to look up towards it as they paused their wrestling match, before he slammed his eyes shut and plugged his ears.

            The intensity of the light and sound grew stronger, more forceful, and he felt a tugging sensation throughout his whole body. It was as though something had grabbed on to every molecule within him and was trying to pull him somewhere, but wasn’t quite strong enough. He knew this was some sort of rescue attempt, probably by Castiel (what other angel would want to save him?) and focused on trying to make himself as light and easy to move as possible. He figured that, if the attempt was going to let Michael and Lucifer out, the damage was probably done already.

            The tugging sensation continued for what felt like several minutes before there was a massive _jolt_ and Sam was in two places at once. He felt himself being pulled up and out of the Cage, leaving the vast emptiness behind him, but he was also sitting there on the floor, watching Michael and Lucifer resume their battle. The strange double-identity lasted for a few moments longer, then snapped, and he found himself once again a single person, sitting on the floor of the Cage and wondering what had just taken place.

            Whatever it was, he knew it had really happened – he hadn’t been here long enough to be hallucinating just yet. And if it had really happened, then Castiel had tried to get him out, and had maybe succeeded, except that he was still here. The questions posed by this kept him busy for another two weeks until he decided that there was no way he’d ever find out, and gave up on it.


	2. Protecting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Michael is pissed off, Lucifer is reasonable, and Sam is worried.

If asked before he had met either of the archangels, Sam would have guessed Michael to be the one most likely to call a ceasefire. After meeting them, Sam was not really surprised when it was Lucifer who actually tried to call a truce. Their fighting had been winding down for a few days now, after a steady year of constant fighting, and one day, Lucifer just stopped.

It was precisely 374 days since they had fallen. Sam was keeping track of time meticulously, in addition to other forms of entertainment. He reviewed old memories, recited literature and music to himself, and had even taken up writing in his head, committing each story to memory for lack of paper to write it down on – he actually thought he was pretty good, although of course no one would ever be able to actually read any of them. Whatever else he did, though, he was always sure to keep a steady eye on Michael and Lucifer, in case their attention should turn from each other to him.

It was because of this watchful habit that he heard it when Lucifer said something to Michael, in a softer voice than he had before. Sam still didn’t understand Enochian – Michael and Lucifer had been talking in it constantly, but their shouting was not something he could easily translate, though he had tried. Still, the tone of voice made it pretty clear that this was intended to calm his brother, rather than rile him up.

Michael did not look calmed.

They continued to fight for another day after that, but Sam noticed that Lucifer wasn’t really all that into it. Finally, 17 hours later, Michael’s shouting and ranting turned into something else, something reluctant and tired and angry, but also something more peaceful than anything Sam had heard out of him since they landed.

Lucifer looked pleased, but Michael was still angry, and Sam cringed as the angel’s attention fell on him. For the first time in 375 days, Sam heard someone else speak to him in English.

“As my brother has pointed out,” Michael began, “The Apocalypse has been thrown off its original tracks and neither of us can actually perform our intended roles. I cannot kill him here, and neither can he kill me. In light of that fact, we have agreed upon a … ceasefire, of sorts.” His generally expressionless face now grew more sinister and Sam felt a shiver run through him. _This is it._

Michael continued speaking, undeterred by any of Sam’s thoughts. “But we are here forever, thanks to you, and I could use a little _entertainment_ , if you know what I mean. You are only human, but you may be able to provide me with some sort of diversion.”

He approached Sam slowly, and Sam tried to run (just out of reflex, mostly) but found Michael directly in front of him when he did so. The archangel motioned with his hand and Sam suddenly found himself tied to the floor by shackles that had suddenly manifested themselves out of nothingness. He cursed inwardly. Michael and Lucifer seemed to be able to control some aspects of this place – changing its form slightly, although not too much – and although Sam had tried to do that himself, it must have been an angel thing. He’d never had any luck with it, and wouldn’t now.

Michael must have been reading his thoughts, because he smiled wickedly and drew the knife across Sam’s neck – enough to hurt, but not enough to sever any major artery. Yet. Sam craned his head to look around and caught Lucifer watching from the sidelines, a bored expression on his face.

“Really, brother? You’re just going to cut him up for eternity? How very unoriginal of you.”

They’d been speaking in English ever since Michael took an interest in him, and Sam presumed it was so he could know what was going to happen and fear it, but in this case Lucifer almost seemed to be _protecting_ him. Sam tried not to show his surprise, instead focusing on Michael’s blade as it dug its way deeper into his flesh.

 “Lucifer,” Michael’s voice contained some of Sam’s surprise, and a barely-suppressed fury which Sam suspected Lucifer felt too, but was better at hiding. “Think of what this _human_ has done to us – should he not suffer for it?”

“Perhaps,” Lucifer allowed, “But it would hardly be entertaining enough to last us an eternity, and I fear that if you torture him too much now, he will quickly become rather boring as he breaks.”

Sam held his breath (not that he seemed to need to breathe at the moment anyway) as Michael considered Lucifer’s words. Angels apparently had a different sense of time than humans, because he considered those words for ten minutes, remaining completely still the entire time. Lucifer waited patiently, examining his fingernails and not looking at anyone in particular.

At length, Michael spoke again, tone cautious. “And what would you have us do with him?”

Now Lucifer looked almost embarrassed, for the first time since Sam had met him. He looked at his brother, then at Sam, then at the floor, before finally making eye contact with Michael again and answering.

“We could talk.”

“Talk?” Michael’s incredulity matched Sam’s own feelings, although Sam was decidedly _for_ this idea and he wasn’t sure if Michael had bought into it quite yet.

“Yes, talk. I spent millennia down here, remember?” Lucifer said, “It was boring and I created facsimiles of humanity upon which to take out my wrath. I doubt they were any less realistic in their responses than him,” – and here he gestured at Sam, still restrained on the floor – “But I can tell you from experience that they were rather poor company. Even if he is just a human, he’s someone to talk to.” He paused, looking at Michael pointedly. “Unless you think you and I can have reasonable conversation amongst ourselves for an eternity and find it satisfying?”

Michael deliberated, then nodded curtly, and the restraints around Sam’s limbs melted back into the nothingness. He sat up, rubbing at his wrists and ankles, unwilling to believe that this had really taken place, but hoping against hope that it had.

When had Lucifer gotten logical? He was anything but reasonable when it came to humanity in general. Still, Sam supposed, he’d always been a bit partial to his One True Vessel, and after spending thousands of years in the Cage, potential entertainment must have won out over pride and anger, even for the Devil.

He stood carefully, not taking his eyes off of Michael, who looked as though he still wanted to see what he could do with his knife. Lucifer, meanwhile, formed three chairs for them in a precisely equilateral triangle, and gestured to it with his peculiar sort of grace.

“Shall we?”


	3. Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the archangels lecture, I theorize about metaphysics, and Sam agrees to learn Enochian.

Their first conversation was an awkward thing, and nobody was really sure how to interact with anyone else. They all had good reasons to hate each other, and not many options besides just dealing with it. They just sat and stared for a long moment, until Sam decided to break the silence.

            “So, how does this place work? You guys can change it, but obviously you can’t get out or you would have by now.”

            “We are not changing the boundaries of the Cage itself,” Michael said, “Since the space you see around you is like a bubble within the Cage itself. We can impose our will upon the space within, to an extent, but we cannot break free of it, let alone the true Cage.”

            Michael was reluctant in his response, but Sam thought he had cheered up a little bit at the opportunity to lecture a mere human on the ways of the world.

            “Like holy oil?”

            “No, holy oil works on a different principle,” Lucifer joined the conversation with a forcedly casual tone, as though he had just wandered by and found himself there. Soon, Sam found himself being subjected to a lecture on the metaphysical nature of Grace and the nature of energy and other metaphysics. Fortunately, he found it fascinating, despite the frequent debates between Michael and Lucifer over various approaches to the topics. Still, he supposed that debates were much better than the full-on arguments they’d been having just days before.

            A week later, and they had fallen into a routine. Sam would ask a question, and Michael would launch into a lecture on the topic, with Lucifer making little smart-alecky comments every once in a while. When Michael finally wound down, or Lucifer got too impatient, the topic would change and roles would switch. Then they’d stop for a while, lost in their own thoughts and the need to not be with the others _all_ the time. Sam thought of Dean in those moments, and of Castiel and Bobby and everyone else he knew. He wondered how they were doing, how long it had even been up there, but he had no idea what the conversion for time was down here, and for once, neither did the angels. All any of them knew was that it was different from Hell proper.

            Michael and Lucifer had been reasonably calm since this pattern had started, and Sam was surprised that they were all still being fairly civil. They seemed to take pleasure in showing off everything they knew that he didn’t, and he figured that if playing into their superiority was what this was going to take, he’d do it.

***

            It was a month before he asked about anything other than “safe” topics like metaphysics and types of monsters. He had, two weeks ago, made an inquiry about Adam, and had been informed by Michael that his half-brother had been burned out and was probably in Heaven. As he said it, he cast a pointed look at Lucifer, and Sam quickly tried to step in and direct the conversation to some other topic.

            Today (day 409) he decided to play it a little riskier.

            “What was Heaven like?” he asked, “I mean, for you guys. Not humans.”

            “Hard to explain to someone with merely a human mind,” Lucifer said, and for once Sam didn’t think it was _only_ arrogance that drove his answer. “Better than anything you guys have done with Earth, although if you go back to the beginning, I think Earth was a little more creative.”

            “Earth is insignificant,” Michael said. “Nothing you human have done could possibly compare to Heaven, although some parts of your culture come closer than others.”

            _Interesting,_ Sam thought. _Arch-enemies, but they both have about the same level of arrogance._ They both stated their superiority as though it were fact, and Sam wondered if either of them had ever questioned anything, even when Lucifer fell. Of course, he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

            The response to his question quickly devolved into a lecture on how angels were superior to humans, and for once Sam thought that Michael and Lucifer were in agreement. Lucifer was generally more disdainful towards humanity, whereas Michael spent more time extolling Heaven, but their main points were surprisingly similar. Sam tuned them out about an hour in, until sometime later when Lucifer said,

            “Why _are_ we still speaking in this primitive tongue?”

            “The human knows nothing else.”

            Sam started paying attention to the conversation again, now that he was being mentioned. He couldn’t actually remember what they’d been talking about, too absorbed in his mental organization of classic literature by category.

            “What don’t I know?”

            The angles looked at him in surprise – apparently despite the fact that they were discussing him, they’d forgotten he was there. Lucifer was the first to recover, presumably because he’d known Sam longer.

            “Enochian,” he said.

            “It’s a better language,” Michael added. “Pity you don’t speak it.”

            “You could teach me.”

            Sam wasn’t sure why he’d suggested it, but it seemed like a good idea. He was going to run out of safe questions soon, and they had a _lot_ of time to kill. He’d been meaning to teach himself more of the language at some point anyway.

            Michael and Lucifer exchanged a glance, and for a brief moment Sam actually thought they seemed … brotherly. It was strange, seeing that spark of what must have been there before the fall, but he thought he liked it. It was just too bad that they’d had to wind up here to see it again.

            Soon, the moment passed and they looked away, back at Sam.

            “I don’t suppose there’s anything better to do,” Lucifer said.

            “And it would be pleasing for us to communicate in the language of home,” Michael added.

            And with that, the lessons began.


	4. Learning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam starts to learn Enochian and he and Lucifer have a heart-to-heart.

            Sam sighed, squinting at the paper in front of him. After three failed days of trying to learn Enochian with nothing but his head, he had finally talked Lucifer and Michael into manifesting some paper and pens for him out of the nothingness – albeit with slightly disappointed airs from both of them. The following three weeks had gone much more smoothly.

            Despite their requisite smug superiority and distaste for humanity, he thought the archangels were softening slightly towards him. Two days ago he’d found himself recounting certain aspects of popular culture in response to something Michael had said, and to his surprise both of them had listened to him and he thought he may have caught the faintest glimmers of fascination in their eyes.

            Now, he was sitting crosslegged in one of the manifested chairs and both archangels were staring at him with irritated patience (how that was a thing, he didn’t know, but they managed it.”

            He cleared his throat. “Uh, **There was a ghost … disease and Dean got it and feared much.”** He glanced down at his notes as he continued telling the story. **“We found a … paper of a woman’s face and … looked into it…”** When he wound down, Michael gave him an appraising look.

            **“Not bad. Your accent needs work.”**

 **“We have … time,”** Sam said. “Maybe **one of you should,** uh, **talk now.”**

            Michael nodded his acquiescence. **“We watched you humans develop language,”** he said. **“It was interesting. We never ‘developed’ our language – it was given to us by our father. When you developed languages, we knew them as you did, although none had the same ring as the first. It was interesting.”**

            Sam didn’t understand all of the words Michael used, but he got the gist of the story before Lucifer butted in.

            **“Speak for yourself, brother. That was when I started to _dislike_ them.”**

 **“You once liked humans?”** Sam asked, surprised.

            **“Before they were human,”** Lucifer clarified. **“Before-”**

 **“Before you defied our father and ruined our family,”** Michael finished for him.

            Sam knew where this was going, and tried to head it off before it could get there. **“** Okay, new topic,” he decided, before pausing to think and repeating the words in Enochian, just in case it would get through to them better. **“New topic.”**

            Michael and Lucifer continued to glare at each other for a long, tense moment, but Lucifer broke the silence.

            **“What did you have in mind?”**

So it was back on Sam to talk. He wracked his memory, then launched into the story of a hunt he and Dean had done with their father before he’d left for college. That story somehow turned into an enthusiastic discussion of mythology, and soon Michael and Lucifer were taking turns lecturing him - apparently pagan gods trying to eat people was a safe topic. Sam kept that in mind for later.

            As time passed, Sam got better at predicting touchy subjects, and keeping Michael and Lucifer off each other’s throats when one came up. Human culture was safe, but humanity as a whole was not. Mentioning the Apocalypse was a bad idea, obviously, but it was okay to talk about normal hunts that he’d done around that time. If he could find the right topic, he could actually sometimes get the brothers to play nice for a while, and forget that they hated each other.

            A first, he was afraid that telling them stories about himself and Dean would lead to problems, but they actually seemed to enjoy hearing them. One day, while Michael was off doing his own thing somewhere, Lucifer approached him.

            **“How do you do it?”**

            **“Do what?”** Sam asked, confused.

            Lucifer sighed. **“Stay with Dean. Repair things when you should be unable to.”**

 **“You mean after the Apocalypse?”** Sam sighed. Michael wasn’t here right now, so nothing was likely to explode, but he wasn’t sure he liked where this was going – giving relational advice to the Devil wasn’t something he felt he was qualified to do. **“Well, I apologized and admitted I had erred, to begin with,”** he said. **“That was not exactly enough, of course. I stopped trusting myself and left. When I wanted to come back, he refused, then agreed later. I still do not know what happened to change his mind. After that, it was rough, but we stayed together because we had to, and because it was habit, and easy to fall back into old patterns even when Dean was still angry with me.”** Sam thought back to his reunion with Dean after their brief stint apart. **“He told me that we keep each other human.”**

            Sam very deliberately did not think about what that meant for them now that they were, and would forever be, apart.

            Lucifer hummed thoughtfully in response. **“Old patterns…”**

            After that, he was quiet for a long while.


	5. Adjusting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam freaks out, and also talks the archangels into writing a novel.

            It wasn’t until he’d been in the Cage for four years that it really hit Sam. He’d been sitting off by himself, meditating to pass time (a habit he’d picked up after year two) when he realized that _this was eternity._

            He’d told himself over and over that he was here forever, had known that when he jumped, but somehow it was more of a word than an idea – something he knew but couldn’t possibly understand. But then, while adding another tally to his mental calendar, he realized that he had been down here longer than he’d been at Stanford – this was the longest time he’d ever gone without Dean, without hunting, and he has an infinity left to go.

            He was only four years in.

            Abruptly, he found himself crying quietly, trying not to be loud enough to draw attention. He knew it wasn’t so bad – could be much worse, and he’d expected it to be _much_ worse – but it still hurt to realize that he would _never_ see Dean, Cas, or Bobby ever again.

            The pain in his chest intensified for a brief moment of panic when he wondered if he would ever forget them completely – lose their faces, personalities, memories – but then he calmed himself down. He had feared that from the beginning, and had planned for it. He remembered, and he would continue to do so for as long as he kept up his routine of remembering so he would not forget. _He would not forget_.

            He knew he was starting to forget some things – minor things. He wasn’t sure about geography too much anymore, or any of the rules that went with driving. He was pretty sure that he’d remember if he was put into a moving vehicle right that moment and was told to drive or navigate, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

            It still bothered him.

            He breathed for a while – ten minutes, according to his watch – until he was calm again. He may have forgotten the trivialities of driving and which roads went where, but he had learned so much more. Lectures with Michael and Lucifer were actually pretty interesting, and his Enochian had been solid for a long time now. But what was the point of learning things here when there was nothing to be done with any of it?

            He sat a while longer, eyes closed to remember things from Before until he felt someone approach. He opened his eyes to see Michael approaching him.

            **“Hello,”** he said. **“Are you well?”**

            Sam shrugged. Michael didn’t usually talk to him one-on-one, and was still awkward in his communications with Sam and mildly disapproving in his communications with Lucifer. But here he was, and he seemed well-intentioned, if not actually concerned.

            **“I just miss the real world,”** he replied. **“Nothing I can do about it.”** He left unspoken the knowledge that he had chosen this, and would continue to choose it even if he had a choice.

            Michael nodded in agreement, face not quite blank. **“There is nothing any of us can do.”** He paused for a moment, turning to leave. **“But you got what you wanted, Sam. The Earth is its own, and you are free to make your own decisions, even here.”**

            And with that he left, off to find Lucifer and argue or meditate or something – Sam wasn’t quite sure what the angels did in their mutually-agreed-upon downtime. Sam watched him go, mulling over the brief conversation.

            It wasn’t home; wasn’t Earth; wasn’t family.

            But it could be worse.

***

            Years passed, and Sam found his perception of time changing with them. He still had his watch – probably incorporeal and still working, through some strange property of the Cage – so he knew time wasn’t _really_ passing any differently than it always did down here, but it felt different. He chalked it up to the endless procession of days in the pit – if you had forever, was there really much difference between one year and five? After a while, it all sort of blurred together into a long stretch of “Now” and “Before” marking out the span of his existence.

            It had been ten years and some change, he knew, thanks to his meticulously kept calendar. Time may have been a blur, and it may not have mattered what the actual number was, but Sam felt better if he kept a count of it anyway.

            Lucifer and Michael never stopped making fun of him for it.

            **“So human of you,”** Lucifer mused, watching him add another tally mark to the semi-magical, semi-technological chart he’d persuaded Lucifer to manifest for him.

            **“It makes me feel better,”** Sam defended, unable to come up with anything more substantial as an argument. **“Besides, you are the one who made this for me,”** he added, gesturing to the chart.

            **“True,”** Lucifer admitted, **“I just needed something to do.”**

            **“So do I, _”_** Sam said, smiling.

            The archangels’ ability to manifest things in the Cage was limited, but useful. They could make objects, like chairs and charts and pieces of paper, but they couldn’t recreate an entire environment or memory, and their technological capacities were limited to things like magical charts, rather than full-blown computers or cars. They also didn’t seem to be able to manifest any full books, much to Sam’s disappointment. He guessed they’d never read enough human literature to be able to manifest any of it, and there probably wasn’t such a thing as Enochian literature.

            Until now, anyway.

            About a year ago, they’d started to have trouble coming up with topics for discussion. They could really only lecture him on so many topics, or tell so many stories before things started to repeat, after all. That was when Sam came up with the idea that they write stories.

            **“How should we resolve the conflicts between chapters three and fourteen?”** Michael asked, looking up from the page he was examining.

            **“Just kill someone,”** Lucifer said. **“Easy.”**

            **“Perhaps we should not,”** Sam said hastily, still trying to use the fictional worlds they were creating to instill some sort of moral sense on Lucifer. It didn’t seem to be working out, however – he had an _interesting_ approach to character motivations and actions.

            **“Hmm.”** Michael mused. **“Who?”**

            Of course, Michael’s motivations really weren’t all that much more obviously moral, Sam supposed. The brothers didn’t really argue about _if_ they should kill someone so much as _who_ they should kill. They didn’t really get along, by any means, but Sam thought that they were actually capable of tolerating each other as long as there was no possible way for them to commit fratricide instead.

He watched the argument escalate, amused, and then cut in before it could get anywhere dangerous. Ten years of practice and he still missed the mark sometimes, but his timing had gotten pretty good, all things considered.

            **“We should just cut the scene in chapter three and add something in chapter fourteen to compensate,”** he decided, watching as the archangels turned to him in surprise – they still managed to forget he was there sometimes, when they really got caught up in a debate.

            Michael blinked. **“Okay.”**

            Lucifer nodded. **“That could work, but I still like my idea better.”**

            Sam groaned.

            He couldn’t believe he’d only been here ten years.


	6. A New Sort of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they all sleep, Sam angsts a bit, and everyone plays Monopoly.

“Ugh,” Sam said – one of the few words which didn’t exist in Enochian – and turned to Lucifer. **“How did you do this for so many years?”**

            It had been twenty years since he’d fallen into the Cage, and the past two months had been the most boring part yet. They’d tired of writing a year ago, and nobody could quite figure out what to do instead. Sam had taken to meditating and trying to remember Dean, Cas, Bobby, and all the other people he knew, while Michael and Lucifer had mostly been squabbling amongst themselves.

            Lucifer thought. **“Slept, mostly. Tortured some manifested people.”** He lit up. **“We could torture some people, I suppose.”**

            Sam decided to focus on the first half of the statement. **“You can sleep here?”**

            Okay, so he knew he probably should have thought to ask about that after twenty years down here, but since he hadn’t had to eat, or drink, or do anything else associated with bodily functions, he figured sleep was out of the question too. He certainly never felt the right sort of tired for it.

            Michael, for once, looked as confused as Sam felt. **“Brother, why would you sleep? Is that not a human function?”**

            Lucifer’s expression grew almost sheepish. **“I was bored, and there was nothing really to do. Doing nothing while unconscious seemed better than being _conscious_ while I did nothing.”**

 **“Sure.”** Michael didn’t sound impressed.

            **“It was not exactly** **sleep anyway,”** Lucifer defended. **“It lasted longer than the paltry eight hours for which I am led to believe humans sleep.”**

            **“Hmm.”** Michael responded noncommittally. **“How do you do this … not-sleeping?”**

As it turned out, you did it pretty much the exact same way you did any other kind of sleeping. It was sort of nice, for a while. The archangels created some comfortable blanket-pillow-nest things for them to sleep in (apparently beds were too stereotypically human for them to sleep on) and they slept.

            When they woke up, Sam pestered Lucifer until he learned that a year and a half had passed, and adjusted his calendar chart accordingly.

***

            Twenty-eight years in, Sam realized he’d been in the Cage for more than half of his existence. It made him think of the mathematics he theorized about sometimes with Michael, and earlier lessons, more simplistic ones, and ratios where the bottom increases forever and ever until the top is meaningless and you call the whole thing zero.

            If he was a ratio of Before to Now, did his past just vanish, too?

            He knew he was different than he’d been Before, but he liked to think that nothing truly fundamental had been changed. Sure, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken a word of English, and was slowly but surely forgetting what the real world even _looked_ like, but he was still himself.

            Wasn’t he?

            Three weeks ago, he’d been playing cards with Lucifer and Michael, watching as the archangels cheated their way through by changing the card faces. Frustrated but amused, he’d played a low-valued card, wishing all the while that he could change it to something else just to be on fair ground with the others.

            Somehow the card he played didn’t seem to be the one he remembered being in his hand. Michael congratulated him before cheating again and winning anyway.

            Sam didn’t say anything.

***

            **“We should play a game – but not cards,"** Sam said one day. It had been four years since the card games, and thirty-four years total. The past three years had been spent debating philosophy and attempting to write books on various theories. It had started off with serious debates about the relative merit of various human approaches to existence, but by the time Sam had found himself arguing with Lucifer about the usefulness of fingernails three days ago, he’d decided they should change tracks.

            **“What sort of game?”** Michael asked, looking up from the tome he was writing on what he claimed was the “social dynamic of age from a nonlinear perspective” but which Sam privately thought was mostly a list of complaints about his younger brother.

            **“There are many options,”** Sam said, starting to list them off. It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to remember any games, but he’d had the last few days to come up with ideas. **“Board games, like Risk, Monopoly, Clue, and the like; sports like catch and soccer and stuff; word or verbal games…”** he trailed off.

            **“What is monopoly?”** Lucifer asked. **“It sounds interesting”**

            **_Of course_ ,** Sam thought. **_Lucifer would pick that one._**

Explaining the game well enough for Michael and Lucifer to manifest the board and pieces was tricky – in no small part because Sam couldn’t exactly remember the whole game. In the end, he gave up on making it look like an actual monopoly board, and decided to let them have some fun with it.

            **“-And the highest-valued properties can be places you two know in Heaven,”** he said, instructing them on some of the few remaining squares.

            **“What goes in that square on the bottom left?”** Michael asked curiously.

            **“Oh,”** Sam thought. **“I think that square is for some sort of jail or something.”**

            **“Hmm.”** Lucifer stared at it for a moment or two, and the square changed to show a complex spherical shape that Sam understood to represent the metaphysical boundaries of their current location. The caption read **“Cage”**

            **“Yes, that works,”** Sam said, smiling but not quite sure why. **“Now what about pieces?”**


	7. Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we see a snippet of Sam's daily routine in the Cage

            Forty years after jumping, Sam realized as he was sitting down to meditate that this was the length of time Dean spent in Hell.

            He shudders at the thought, trying to suppress both the horror at what Dean had to go through and the guilt that his time in the Cage has been free of torture. The guilt is misplaced and pointless, and he knows it, but since when has that ever stopped an emotion?

            Grimacing at himself, he settled in a seated position and began his daily routine.

            Michael and Lucifer had scoffed at him for it at first – taking time to remember people he would never again see – but they had stopped after a while, when he kept doing it. Sam didn’t really take offense to their reactions anyway: angels didn’t forget anything, so how could they understand the importance of remembering?

            He started, as he always did, with the earliest memories. These only really included Dean and their father, and travelling and hunting and people being hurt and driving in the impala staring out the window.

Over the years, he knew he’d lost some of the details in his memories despite the practice. He couldn’t really recall all of the specific situations anymore; the hunts he had done with Dean and the individual fights with his father trickled from memory. What he did remember were the impressions.

He remembered the feeling of anger when he fought with his Dad, and the different values of warmth in Dean’s smiles, and the tenderness of the short time he’d had with Jess. He remembered the awe-inspiring power he’d glimpsed the first time he met Castiel, and the awkward mix of naiveté and knowledge he’d later shown.

He liked to think that those were the things that mattered.

Once Lucifer and Michael had given in and started manifesting paper and writing utensils for him, he’d taken to recording memories in detail and reviewing them. He would write down what he remembered of various hunts, or conversations he’d had. He’d learned over time that although the notes could help spark memories, even with their aid his mind tended to coalesce them all into snippets and impressions nonetheless.

He still wrote them down.

As he passed through more and more of his memories, he made sure to linger for just as much time on the bad as the good. It was temptingly easy to find a set of memories he liked and rewrite the past to fit them, but that was one thing he’d sworn he would never do.

He may not be able to completely remember every detail, but he wanted to make sure he remembered the situations and impressions and feelings that he did remember accurately. After all the misdirection in his life, it was important to him that he never lie to himself about how his life had been.

For that reason, he forced himself to acknowledge the fights with his father, and the arguments with Dean, and the lies he’d been told. He revisited the times Dean had punched him over some argument, and the fights they’d had about demon blood and Ruby and whether or not Sam deserved a blank slate. It hurt to remember them, but it was a part of the life he’d had, and a part of the people he’d lived with, and he didn’t want to forget that.

He also remembered as a form of penance. He had come here to fix what he’d messed up, and it seemed important to him to remember that. He couldn’t be sure, really, if what he had done was enough to atone for starting the Apocalypse, but he was here now, and there was nothing else he could do to make up for his mistakes. But even with all the things he couldn’t do to change any of it, he could still remember, so he did.

Once the painful memories were dealt with, he allowed himself to savour some of the happier ones. He went back to his time at Stanford with Jess, before the night of her death. He revisited prank wars with Dean and nights spent staring up at the stars. Some of these memories remained in painstaking detail – like the conversation he’d had with Jess on their first date, full of laughter and smiles – and others were pleasant blurs and ideas that he could hold on to, like the nights chatting and teasing with Dean after a successful hunt.

He checked his watch after the session to find that he’d spent an hour and a half on the meditation. It hadn’t always been that way – he’d started off with five minutes at best, but spending so much time in a place like this made such things easier, especially when they were so important. He wasn’t sure if it could actually be qualified as meditation – he was consciously thinking of and remembering things, after all – but it seemed as good a term as any.

Only once he had gone through his routine, checked his watch, and stood up did Michael and Lucifer interact with him for the day. They’d learned their lessons decades ago, after Sam had finally gotten up the nerve to snap at them, no longer terrified that they’d get bored and start torturing him just because they could.

Now they just watched while he meditated, curious and as respectful as they could reasonably be expected to be.

It was enough.


	8. (Not That) Bad Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Michael thinks dolphins should take over the world, Lucifer votes for cats, and Sam wonders how much people can change.

            Fifty-five years in, Sam added a new day to his calendar and turned to the archangels.

            **“Do you want to do anything today?”**

            They’d spent the past few years interacting off and on, rather than constantly. They’d take time for a lecture now and then, but everyone had been spending a significant amount of time on their own, too. Sam had been spending his time writing down anything he could think of and organizing his thoughts. He recorded memories from Before, of course, but he also tried to record and study things he’d learned from Michael and Lucifer.

            The archangels, for their parts, appeared to spend a great deal of time just sitting, lost in thought or memory or something.

            **“That would be amenable,”** Michael decided. Lucifer snorted.

            **“Amenable? Really, brother?”** But he didn’t voice any complains either.

            Sam nodded. **“Okay.”** He paused. **“What are you two doing when you spend time alone, anyway?”**

 **“Nothing a mere mortal could comprehend.”** Lucifer informed him.

            This time it was Michael who looked dubious. He shot a glare at his younger brother before turning to Sam. **“Much the same as what you do, Sam,”** he said seriously (of course, he said everything seriously). **“Remembering. We also let ourselves drift a little, to pass time.”**

 **“Lucifer too?”** Sam asked. **“I thought he would be imagining the end of the world or something.”**

            The angel in question sniffed, offended. **“I never said otherwise.”**

 **“You know,”** Sam begins, **“There are better things to do than wiping out humanity.”**

            This is a familiar conversation – many conversations are familiar now – although it is one that Sam had originally been afraid to hold. He learned after a time, however, that Michael and Lucifer found his debates more amusing than anything, and that they seemed to actually enjoy arguing with him and each other about the fate of mankind.

            **“Sam,”** Lucifer said. **“You know I could never do that. Humanity is a stain upon the Earth. It must be eliminated – except for you, of course.”**

 **“Of course,”** Sam rolled his eyes.

            **“Even Michael thinks humanity is mostly useless. Is that not true, brother?”**

            **“It was our father’s will that we fight,”** Michael hedged. **“That humans die in the crossfire was unavoidable.”**

            **“Except that we did avoid it,”** Sam pointed out. **“How could it have been your father’s will if you never fought?”**

            They were silent at that, and Sam wondered if he had gone too far this time. He watched them tentatively, and breathed in relief when Lucifer broke the silence.

            **“I meant what I said at the graveyard, Michael. I did not wish to fight you.”**

            **“I know,”** Michael said. **“I would not have tried, save for our father’s will.”** Most humans wouldn’t have caught the slight softening of his features, but Sam had known the archangel long enough to read his facial expressions. **“I am glad that we appear to have been mistaken.”**

            Lucifer nodded in agreement, and Sam couldn’t stop the smile spreading across his face – although he did make sure to hide it when Lucifer looked back at him to continue their previous discussion.

            **“But humans are still a waste of time,”** he decided. **“I think everything would be better off with some other species ruling the Earth instead.”**

            Sam gave up – as he usually did – on trying to convince Lucifer to like humanity. To be fair, Lucifer had mostly stopped genuinely trying to convince Sam to hate humanity, too, so it was pretty much always a stalemate. “ **So what species _do_ you think should rule Earth?”** he asked. **“Angels,”**

            **“Absolutely not,”** Lucifer said. **“I was actually thinking something more like cats.”**

            **“Cats are intriguing,”** Michael agreed. **“But there are far more sophisticated species that could potentially take over if humans were eliminated.”**

            **“Like what?”** Sam asked, although he did in fact have (extremely vague) recollections of some species of animal which would probably fit. If he was honest with himself, his memories of the flora and fauna of Earth were unsurprisingly blurry, but they were still there in some capacity, at least.

            **“Dolphins, for one,”** Michael said. **“Or certain species of ape, or even some crows.”**

 **“I still like cats better,”** Lucifer announced. **“What do you think, Sam?”**

            Sam groaned. Lucifer always did this when there was a debate between him and Michael. **“Lucifer, I will not side with you just because I am your vessel,”** he chided the archangel. **“But dolphins are aquatic, are they not? Could the dolphins not rule the seas as the cats rule the land?”**

            They both nodded, seemingly pleased with the compromise.

            **“How long would it take for them to develop a civilization like that?”** Sam wondered.

            **“At least a century,”** Michael said.

            **“Less, if I have any influence,”** Lucifer added.

            **“You would do that?”** Michael asked.

            They kept debating, but Sam was lost in thought. He’d been here for fifty-five years, all measured faithfully with his watch, magical archangel-calendar-thing, and a great deal of prodding at the archangels. He’d been here for fifty-five years, but on the outside it hadn’t even been six _months_. If those cats and dolphins ran on the same time as he did, they’d probably be able to take over the Earth in two years flat. Civilizations could rise and fall; people could be born and live and die in that time.

            People could change.

            Not for the first time, he wondered who he was now. He wondered if Dean would recognize him if, impossibly, they ever met. He wondered if he would recognize himself.

            He liked to think that he hadn’t changed in any ways that mattered, but he couldn’t be sure. After all, he was probably too close to himself to really tell. At the very least, however, he didn’t believe he had changed for the worse. Despite the negative influence of spending time with demons Before, all the time he was spending here with the Devil himself wasn’t doing a whole lot other than making him better at compromising between the two brothers.

            He knew that was a simplistic version, of course – he didn’t really want to lie to himself. He was forgetting more and more, despite his best attempts to remember, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually spoken English, and he knew far more about complicated metaphysics and math and other obscure topics than he’d ever planned to learn.

            But when it came down to it, he still _felt_ like himself. And as he watched Michael and Lucifer plan out imaginary cat-dolphin politics (apparently imagination was apparently one thing angels _could_ learn, provided the right humans taught them) he wondered if it was really so bad.


	9. Theories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I ramble about the metaphysics of the Cage and the three inhabitants jump to the wrong conclusion - but don't realize it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you've read the first story in this series, you'll know the actual reason for what's going on here. They don't.

            Sam eyed the pen in confused wariness. It had been black a moment ago – the same colour it had been for the entirety of its existence – but now it was blue. He had, in fact, been wishing it _were_ blue, rather than black, but seeing as how he’d kept that piece of information to himself, he had no idea how Michael or Lucifer would have thought to change it.

            Unless they were reading his mind.

            **“Michael? Lucifer?”** He looked up from the page and at the two archangels in question. **“Did one of you change this pen?”**

            They both shook their heads.

            **“I did not alter the writing utensil,”** Michael said. **“Why?”**

            **“It was black,”** Sam said. **“Now it is blue.”**

            **“Is that a problem?”** Lucifer asked curiously.

            Sam hesitated. **“Well… no, not really,”** he admitted. **“I wanted it to be blue. What I am more concerned about is the fact that it changed, so one of you must have done it, and that means that you have been reading my mind without telling me.”**

            **“Sam,”** Lucifer pointed out reasonably. **“We have all eternity together. Why read your mind when I could waste time trying to get you to just _tell_ me things?”**

            Michael nodded. **“And why would we care about your pen colour? It hardly seems a thought worth noticing.”**

            **“Then how did the pen change?”** Sam asked, frustrated. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the archangels – he did – but he couldn’t see how else this could have happened.

            This wasn’t the first time something similar had taken place, either. He’d noticed on several occasions that things had changed slightly when he wanted them to, but usually it was easy to ignore or attribute to Michael or Lucifer. It had happened more frequently over the past fifteen years than the preceding fifty-five, and he had figured that they were toying with him or something out of boredom.

            From the obvious (or, obvious to him, after so long) confusion on their faces, he wasn’t so sure.

            It was Lucifer who finally spoke. **“It is, perhaps, possible that you are manipulating this environment in minor ways, Sam,”** he said. **“After all, you are possessed of certain abilities and powers, are you not?”**

            **“What would some minor psychic abilities that manifested only a few times have to do with this?”** Sam asked. **“And the demonic powers only exist when I drink their blood.”** He still winced a little as he said the words, but forced them out anyway.

            Michael nodded. **“Perhaps, but my brother has a point. The demonic abilities gave you practice with manipulating the world using your mind. It is possible that you are channeling those skills here.”**

            **“You mean I am unconsciously using the demonic powers again?”** Sam couldn’t keep the panic out of his voice.

            **“No,”** Michael assured him. **“Just the skill of manipulating power with your mind.”**

            **“The power itself may be drawn from the energy floating around here,”** Lucifer commented.

            **“What energy?”** Sam asked. He didn’t feel anything, but then again he wasn’t sure that he was capable of sensing that sort of thing without Azazel’s living influence. Of course, it could be like getting used to a certain smell in a room or something, too – he’d been here for seventy years, so why _would_ he notice something like that? Michael and Lucifer probably did just because they were archangels and had different senses. His train of thought broke as he realized Michael was talking and pulled his attention back.

            **“-energy from our true forms leaks out in wisps and trickles over time, or when we use power to change things,”** Michael was explaining. **“It dissipates, of course, but more slowly here, given the situation.”** He turned to Lucifer. **“Actually, I am surprised it dissipates here at all. I thought nothing could leave this place.”**

            Lucifer shrugged. **“I guess Dad was against excess Grace building up and causing some sort of explosion. It would be a pity if it had killed me or broken open the Cage.”**

            Sam caught the bitter edge to Lucifer’s voice and hastily brought the conversation back on topic.

            **“If I draw upon this excess energy to change things, can you two not sense the depletion?”** Sam asked. It was a tactic to change the topic away from Lucifer’s troubled relationship with his father, but it was also an honest question.

            Both archangels paused, heads cocking in a way that Sam had learned meant they were examining something that was not in the human range of perception.

            **“There is too much interference,”** Michael concluded.

            Lucifer nodded in agreement. **“That the energy is ours makes it more difficult to tell,”** he added.

            **“Well,”** Sam said, **“It is good to know I am not just going insane,”**

            It had been an honest worry of his – how long could his sanity really hold out in anything resembling eternity? He was glad that he was still in the clear, but he knew that despite the seemingly long stretch of seventy years, this was still the very early stages of his stay.

            **“We could teach you how to control it better,”** Michael said, interrupting his thoughts.

            **“Then you could make your own paper, rather than having us do it for you all the time,”** Lucifer added wryly. **“It is something to do.”**

            **“Yes,”** Sam agreed. **“That sounds like a good idea.”**

            As they progressed, Sam found that manipulating the energy around him here was similar to and different from the demonic powers he’d once had, and Sam wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Michaela and Lucifer assured him that they were nothing alike – for starters, this wasn’t something he’d be able to do anywhere else. The unique energetic atmosphere of the Cage allowed him to do this, but there wasn’t enough power to draw on in the “Real World”. And, obviously, there were no demons involved in this. Sam was grateful for that – the lack of demons was one of the things he would never complain about in the Cage.

            They drifted off topic after a while, switching gears to focus on board games and novels about things they barely remembered, but by the time they lost interest, Sam had successfully become his own source of paper and writing equipment, which was very convenient.

            He never had gotten complete confirmation from the archangels about their theory, but it seemed likely enough.

            After all, what else could it be?


	10. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the three of them decide to play D&D, and Sam desperately searches his memory for the rules of the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I know, Dryads are not part of D&D, but Sam hasn't played in a while.

            **“How do you do this again?”** Michael asks, frowning at the oddly-shaped dice on the table in front of them.

            Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. **“I do not completely remember,”** he admitted. In truth, he’d played Dungeons and Dragons a bit in college because some of his friends were into it, but he hadn’t thought about it for a long time even Before. It had been eighty-six years in the Cage, plus more than five years in addition to that, since he’d played. **“We will need to invent many of the rules.”**

            He had suggested that they try a role-playing game after the third week straight of everyone playing – and cheating at – all the board and card games Sam knew. Neither of the archangels really understood the concept, but Sam was unofficially the one responsible for new entertainment ideas, so they’d agreed to give it a try.

            **“First we need to design people to pretend to be,”** Sam explained. He remembered that part at least.

            **“Why would I want to be someone else?”** Lucifer asked.

            **“Because you are trapped in a Cage for all eternity?”** Michael guessed. **“How do we decide who to be?”**

            Sam shrugged. **“I think we just … choose.”** He thought back, struggling to remember the mechanics of the game. **“The world of the game is different. No angels, I think. A bunch of other races, but I do not remember them all. Elves, humans… dryads? Druids? – fantasy stuff.”**

            The angels absorbed this information before responding.

            **“What will you be?”**

            Having had time to think this out, Sam had an answer ready. **“I will play as a human. I do not remember the classes very well, so we can either make them up or do without them.”**

He had decided to play a human character in part because he didn’t remember many of the species, but that wasn’t the only reason. Ever since he’d found out about Azazel’s blood – and maybe since before that, even – he’d felt like something _other,_ something not completely human. If he could pick something to be in a game, why not choose to have untainted human blood?

            He didn’t offer this train of thought to his game partners, however, and they didn’t ask. Instead, they thought for a span of time (Sam’s watch confirmed it as five minutes) before speaking.

            **“I shall play as an elf,”** Michael decided. **“They are an interesting race, and from what I understand of human perceptions of them, they are superior to your race.”**

Sam nodded, ignoring the jibe. Michael may be the “good son” but he didn’t really respect humans any more than Lucifer. Sam thought it came from being as powerful as an archangel was without interacting with humanity like Gabriel had (whether Gabriel respected humanity was up for debate, but he’d managed to stand up for them at the end, and Sam figured that counted for something).

            **“What about you, Lucifer?”** Sam asked.

            Lucifer tilted his head thoughtfully, considering his options. **“I do not care for elves,”** he said. **“And I will not play a human, obviously.”**

            **_What a surprise,_** Sam thought. **_He dislikes Michael’s choice._**

            **“Obviously,”** he responded dryly. **“What about the other species?”**

            Sam didn’t suggest any other species in particular, of course, since he knew that anything he suggested would probably accidentally offend Lucifer.

            The archangel was silent for several minutes as he considered. Finally, just as Sam was about to give up and suggest something for him (what, he wasn’t sure), he finally replied.

            **“Perhaps a dryad.”**

            **“A tree-spirit?”** Sam asked, surprised.

            **“That is what a dryad is, yes,”** Lucifer had picked up sarcasm somewhere and Sam wasn’t sure if he was amused or irritated by it. **“I like trees. It is humanity that bothers me.”** He frowned, considering. **“Your species bothers trees, too, come to think of it.”**

            **“Okay,”** Sam said, unable to really protest. **“You can be a dryad.”** He wasn’t honestly sure if those had been in the game when he played it, but he didn’t really suppose it mattered –who was going to police the rules?

            **“Now we pick alignments,”** Sam announced. He remembered this part better the species, because he’d spent at least a month afterwards trying to decide where the people he knew fit. He’d never really come up with a good answer.

            **“Alignments?”** Michael asked.

            **“Good, neutral, and evil,”** Sam explained. **“Along with, what was it, order, chaos, and something else – oh, neutral. I will play neutral-good.”** Playing a chaos character felt too much like his actual life had been Before, but playing order felt too strange even for a game. **“What about you?”**

            **“Nah,”** Lucifer said, using a blended Enochian-English term they’d developed to fill some of the gaps in Enochian’s casual vocabulary.

            **“Nah?”** Sam repeated.

            **“Good, evil – it is all too contrived,”** Lucifer claimed. **“I am above such concepts.”**

            **“I am not sure I agree,”** Michel said. **“Good is what our father wants, and evil is disobeying.”**

            **“Really, brother?”** Lucifer asked. **“If this lack of an Apocalypse has taught us anything, it is that we do not know what he wills. Those are obedience and disobedience, not good and evil.”**

            Michael looked thoughtful. **“Perhaps. They are largely human conceptions of the world.”**

            **“So we are not playing with alignments?”** Sam asked, not really willing to get involved in a debate that looked like it could turn sour at any moment.

            **“Yes,”** Michael answered, mind made up. **“What now?”**

 **“Um,”** Sam said eloquently. **“We come up with a scenario and pretend to be our characters and stuff?”**

            The archangels just stared at him blankly, waiting for him to give more specific guidance.

            **“We already know each other,”** Sam decided. **“But barely. We have formed a group to attempt to, um… explore a mysterious underground city we just discovered?”**

            Michael didn’t look impressed. **“Why do we form this group?”**

            **“Maybe we all found the entrance simultaneously?”** Sam suggested. **“Or someone found it and put up an advertisement in search of exploration partners.”**

            **“The second idea is plausible,”** Lucifer said. **“Although I have never known dryads to be fond of exploration.”**

            **“Dryads do not usually stray far from their trees, no,”** Michael agreed. **“Perhaps you should not accompany us.”**

            **“We cannot simply leave him out,”** Sam said. **“But if dryads do not travel, how could you have any adventures with us?”**

            **“Perhaps I will break from the tradition of my species,”** Lucifer conceded.

            Sam pretended to ignore the muttered **“Wouldn’t be the first time,”** from Michael and continued on with their story. They realized about ten minutes in that they had forgotten to figure out stats or skills or anything, and had to break again to invent some. That devolved into a discussion of the various types of skills such creatures would hypothetically possess in an alternate universe, and it was a day before they finally got back to the game.

            Once they got the hang of it, though, Sam thought he quite enjoyed it. He certainly appreciated it more now than he had Before – here, it was an escape, and a way to travel somewhere other than the Cage. He could imagine he was _in_ the world, and _changing_ it, and _doing_ something more substantial than chatting with two of the most famous mythical archenemies of his time. It was nice. He knew he wasn’t really going anywhere or doing anything, but he could pretend he was, and for now, that was enough.

            It had to be.


	11. Break and Renew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam comes close to breaking, but feels a bit better after a heart to heart with Lucifer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that in "The Space of Years Between Us" Sam doesn't know for sure how long he was in the Cage, except for "more than 100 years". This is why.

            **_One-hundred years_** , Sam thought to himself, scribbling absent-mindedly on the page and erasing it with a thought. **_One hundred years in here, and out there?_**

            He’d avoided asking Michael and Lucifer about the time different between the Cage and the Real World. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but at the moment he wasn’t sure he could help himself. At this point, he could probably figure out the metaphysics and do the calculation himself, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to think about it any more than he already was, and he only had one idea of how to make the questions stop circulating.

            **“Michael?”** He asked.

            The archangel turned to look at him curiously. **“Yes, Sam?”** he replied. Sam caught Lucifer looking up from his book (one he had written, and had decided to read, although not edit because he figured anything he wrote was excellent as is).

            **“How long has it been out there?”** He gestured vaguely upward, aware that there was no true direction to the Real World but not really caring. He held his breath as Michael answered him.

            **“Less than a year,”** Michael said slowly. **“Did you want to know exactly? Why do you ask? Sam – Sam, are you okay?”**

            Sam had taken off running. He had actually picked running up as a practice several years ago, when he had grown frustrated with his inability to recall the details of a hunt they had done many years ago in Minnesota. However the Cage worked, the body his mind created for him could at least produce the illusion of exercise, and he found it calming to pretend to be real.

            Today, however, he just had to move. He didn’t know why it mattered so much to him that it had been _less than a year_ , but it did. After everything he had been through here – everything he had learned and changed and become – was Dean still the same as ever?

            Of course, Sam realized with a chill that was almost – but not quite – enough to make him slow down, Sam would actually change less than Dean. There would come a day, a millennia in the future for him, when Dean would be dead, and Sam would still be here. Sam would never change, not really, because he would always be here, and even if he didn’t have his mental faculties after a million years or so, there is only so much that a person can lose when there is no world in which they can change.

            Sam let out a burst of speed, trying to push all of his emotions into the (probably imaginary) effort of his run. He tried to let all of his fear and anger and loss and resignation pour into it, as though he could burn them away if he just moved far enough from the archangels that had led to all of this. If they had just been able to get along all those millennia ago…

            Finally, after what felt like forever but was, according to the watch he still kept on him, half an hour, he collapsed onto the blank white floor of the Cage. He lay there for a time, listening to the beating of his heart and trying to pull himself together. He didn’t want to lose it, not really, but it was so _hard_ sometimes even though he knew this was better than anything he had thought he deserved.

            He took the watch off his wrist and toyed with it. He had worn it, watched it, and kept track with it faithfully ever since he landed here, and where had that gotten him? Lying on the floor close to tears, a hundred years away from anything real. It had been a stupid idea anyway – he should have known better than to try to measure infinity.

            He clambered to his feet and glared at the watch before turning to look at the vast expanse of nothingness before him. Grunting, he stretched his arm back and hurled the device as far as he could, watching as the black speck shrank in the distance.

            **“Never did me any good anyway,”** he muttered.

            **“I do not know if I would agree,”** Came a voice from behind him.

            Sam turned, startled to find he wasn’t alone. **“Lucifer?”**

            The archangel looked down, something like embarrassment crossing his borrowed features – a rare emotion on any archangel, but particularly on this one. **“I was concerned about you,”** he admitted. **“You took off so suddenly.”**

            **“It was nothing,”** Sam tried to sound calm, but failed miserably. **“But after everything, after all these years – how can it be so little up there? I tried not to change, and look now.”** He gestured to himself, knowing that he looked the same but also that Lucifer would know what he meant. **“I remember the important things, but _he_ remembers _everything_ , and it will never matter because I will never see him again, but-” **he trailed off, not sure how to continue.

            **“But you still hope,”** Lucifer finished for him. He sighed heavily, then manifested a bench and invited Sam to sit next to him on it with a graceful ripple of his hand. **“I used to hope too, you know,”** he said. **“Back when I was here the first time.”** He saw the look on Sam’s face and hurried to continue. **“Not of escape, although I suppose there was that too, but of peace. I meant everything I have said, Sam. I did not want this. It was the only option available to me, and I do not regret my choices, but I do … wish things could have been different.”**

            **“What did you hope for?”** Sam asked, curious despite himself. He could feel his emotions calming slightly in response to Lucifer’s gentle voice. **“How did you deal with it?”**

            Lucifer was silent for a long time before responding. **“I hoped for family,”** he said finally. **“You should have seen it, Sam, the way it was before. Before humans came and ruined everything”** – and here his voice was only slightly bitter, for once, too caught up in the nostalgia he was describing – **“Before all of that, it was a home. We belonged together, and we were happy, and even after everything that happened, after I Fell, it shone in my memory like a lone star among this darkness sent specifically to mock my impotence in this pit.”** He sighed. **“I wept. I screamed and raged and beat my wings and prayed and cursed.”**

            Sam watched him carefully. **“Did anything help?”**

            Lucifer shook his head. **“None of that, no.”** He paused, thinking, and then looked into Sam’s eyes with something brighter than Sam had expected to see. **“Nothing helped me the first time around, but then I was alone. I am not alone anymore, Sam – and neither are you.”**

            **“You have your brother,”** Sam pointed out. **“Dean is not here – nor would I wish him to be.”**

            **“Sam,”** Lucifer chided gently, **“You have us. We may not be your family, and we certainly have significant differences of opinion, but we are all here together.”** He reached out his hand, and with a soft twisting motion materialized a watch identical to the one Sam had thrown away. He proffered it to him, smiling softly. **“If measuring out this endless expanse of time is what keeps you sane, who are we to judge? Humans have an affinity for numbers.”**

            Sam shook his head and pushed Lucifer’s hand away. **“Leave it,”** he said. **“You were right all along. The years mean nothing.”**

            Lucifer nodded, and the watch vanished as silently as it had appeared. They sat in silence for a long moment, watching the nothingness. Finally, Lucifer spoke again. **“Will you be okay, Sam?”**

            Sam considered. When it came down to it, nothing had changed. He was still in the Cage. A century had passed here, and less than a hundredth of that in the Real World. Dean was gone. Cas was gone. Everyone was gone.

            But he was still here, and he still remembered, and maybe nothing had really changed. Maybe nothing would change.

            Maybe that was okay.

            **“I do not know,”** he told Lucifer honestly. **“But I think, if we all stay together, we might be.”**

            Lucifer nodded, and Sam watched him materialize some coloured wisps in the distance.

            **“Yes,”** he agreed softly. **“I believe we might.”**

            When he returned to their main “camp” area some time later, Sam dematerialized the calendar he’d been using to keep track of the years for so long. He didn’t want or need to know how much time had passed. He had forever, and that was that. As long as he remembered, as long as he was not alone, nothing would change. Nothing would need to.

            It wasn’t his ideal way to spend eternity, but – all things considered – it could have been a Hell of a lot worse.

            Considering this was technically part of Hell, the thought actually made Sam smile.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, constructive criticism (as well as other comments, of course) is welcome.
> 
> I have other pieces I'm working on at the moment, but I do plan to keep writing in this series at some point too.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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